Oh, hello, I didn't see you there. Welcome to this page about my mix for the 30th anniversary of Minidisc. You stumbled upon this page either because you received my Minidisc or were just clicking around. In any case, let me share some background information with you about this disc.

Initially I thought this would become a House mix because that's the music I listened to back then, and associate with the time. But what I discovered is that much of the music I came to love later found its origin in this year.

Also I found out that The KLF existed. Crazy stuff, what a guys.

I started out with comparing my memories of the period to Wikipedia's 1992 page. To my surprise they matched up quite well. There were a lot of significant events that year and after much editing I ended up with this summary of the feeling I would like to convey with the mix:

The Cold War is over,
Nuclear disarmament has begun,
A Digital Revolution is erasing borders,
The Environmental Movement is healing the planet,
It's the dawn of A New World.

So pretentious sounding! If I added a question mark to the last line it could even sound ominous and prophetic!

Honestly, the 90's started out as a decade of positivity: old rivalries were put aside, new unions were formed, inequality become an issue to address, science and space exploration were making the ecological well-being of the planet a popular subject and computer technology was advancing quickly. It looked like a time of hope and change.

(spoilers: there were multiple genocides and famines before the decade was out)

How to capture this hopeful feeling in a mix? No idea. But I went with the music I knew the best: electronic. So I listened to the classics like 2 Unlimited, Snap! and 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor. You know, music that every Dutch kid had on their mix tapes. But it sounded dated. Great music, sure, but it didn't convey the feeling I was looking for. So I went out and looked for what else 1992 had to offer.

Going through many playlists on YouTube and Discogs was a lot of fun. So much good music came out, also in other genres, and I kept being surprised by how modern sounding some music already was back then. And that Trance, my favorite music genre, apparently has much of its roots in '92 was a really nice suprise.

A lot of the tracks I choose were completely new to me, so strictly speaking I did keep to the “What would your first Minidisc be like?” theme of the swap. But I think this string of sound captures both the electronic music you associate with the early 90s (or, at least, I did) and those that were ahead of their time, which fits the futuristic look of Minidisc.

The playlist contains 11 tracks, a short intro and what you could call a bonus track for a total runtime of 73 minutes and 7 seconds, just below the 74 minute limit. All tracks on here are from 1992, with the exception of one-and-a-half. It's up to the bothered listener to find out which came out the year before.

It was a long, time consuming, but very satisfying journey for me. I hope you will enjoy listening to the result!

Three of the tracks have some skips in them but I believe those are present in all high quality versions of these tracks, or maybe even in the master recording?

This Playlist can only be burned onto Blue Minidiscs. Because Our Planet is not Yellow or Purple (Yet).

  1. The KLF - America: What Time Is Love? (Intro Edit)
  2. Utah Saints - Something Good
  3. New Atlantic - I Know (Flute Mix)
  4. Sunscreem - Perfect Motion
  5. Moby - Next Is The E (Club Mix)
  6. Rozalla - Are You Ready To Fly (Rainbow Mix 12" Edit)
  7. Cosmic Baby - Sweet Dreams for Kaa - My Love (Stellar Supreme Edit)
  8. U.S.U.R.A. - Open Your Mind
  9. The Grid - Crystal Clear
  10. Autechre - Crystel
  11. Aphex Twin - Polynomial-C
  12. Orbital - Halcyon
  13. Jamiroquai - When You Gonna Learn? (J.K. Mix)

Some voices say that track 5 and 6 should be swapped.

The last track could be left off since it's more like a bonus track, separate from the rest of the mix.

Would you like to record this on a cassette? What an excellent idea! I recommend using a C90 tape and putting tracks 1 - 7 on side A. It might be possible to fit it on a C60 if you leave off the bonus track and use shorter versions of 'Rozalla - Are You Ready To Fly' (but I think the shorter versions miss the best part) and 'Orbital - Halcyon' (the version I used is 11 minutes long, the 7“ version runs for about 4 minutes).

I made a J-card for a square-ish case and a sticker for the disc. I will share the files for them later.

I had everything printed at a copy shop, and was very happy with the results. I was worried the colors would come out wrong because I had to convert the PDFs from RGB to CMYK colors but that went well. The J-card for my match was printed on 160 grams paper. Slightly thicker paper will probably still fit in the case.

LibreOffice Draw was used to adjust the J-card template that I found, Gimp for the art and text, Scribus to convert Gimp's PDFs to CMYK colors and to turn the text to outlines (so there wouldn't be any font issues at the printer)